Breaking down barriers: how do we evolve UK healthcare?
44m 39s
The podcast series focuses on overcoming barriers in UK healthcare through innovation and technology. The episode delves into evolving UK healthcare with a panel of experts discussing topics like building health resilience post-pandemic and enhancing accessibility to new treatments. Examples of UK leadership in precision medicine and advanced therapies are showcased, illustrating collaborations between industry, academia, and the NHS. The discussion underscores the importance of collaboration, skilled workforce, and innovation in manufacturing to drive down costs and improve adoption of complex therapeutics. The conversation also touches on the need for international cooperation, risk appetite, and regulatory considerations to advance healthcare innovation. Overall, the dialogue emphasizes the shift towards preventative approaches, early diagnostics, and strategic partnerships as key drivers of progress in the healthcare sector.
Transcription
6425 Words, 38786 Characters
Hello and welcome to the second series of Catapult Network Supercharging Innovation
podcast. I'm Catherine Bennett, CEO of the High Value Manufacturing Catapult and former
chair of the Catapult Network. Our network is made up of nine world-leading technology
and innovation centres, established and partially funded by InnovateUK. This supercharging innovation
series explores how the UK must break down barriers to solve national and global challenges
and how this could be realised through the power of science, innovation and technology.
In the fourth episode of this series, our expert panel will be discussing how we can evolve
UK healthcare. Today, you'll hear from some of our most knowledgeable experts across the network.
A fellow Catapult CEO, Chris Malloy, chairs the discussion alongside our colleagues Jacqueline
Barry and Aaron Harish. We also have a very special guest joining Professor Dame Anna
Dominček, Chief Scientist for the Scottish Government and Regius Professor of Medicine
at the University of Glasgow. Can we build health resilience in a post-pandemic world?
What are the best examples of UK leadership in health innovation? How can we increase the
availability and accessibility of new treatments for patients who need them? I'll pass over to Chris
to get the discussion started. Thanks very much, Catherine. There are a few industrial sectors
that come closer to each and every one of us than health. It is in our homes,
our high streets, our hospitals and our hearts for our families, our friends and our co-workers.
There are no shortage of strong opinions that we have ourselves and share and listen to around
the state of health. How we look after our own health and how others help us look after our health.
It was brought into sharp focus by the pandemic, of course, but it is in our every day
and our tomorrows. Be that through our ever-increasing global age, our over-increasing
obesity rates, our rates of mental health and the dramatic rise of microbial resistance,
just to name a few major health care challenges that we see worldwide.
The catapults in the UK work for and with industries who seek productivity through innovation,
and innovation, of course, is the adoption of proven inventions. My name is Chris Malloy,
and I'm the Chief Exec of Medicine's Discovery Catapult, and I'm very happy to be joined today
by my catapult colleagues, Dr. Jacqueline Barry, Chief Clinical Officer at the Selengy Therapy
Catapult, Dr. Arun Harish, Chief Strategy Officer at CPI, part of the High Value Manufacturing
Catapults, and our very special guest today, Professor Damiana Dominicek, Regis Professor
of Medicine at the University of Glasgow, and Chief Scientist for Health in the Scottish Government.
We hope that this group brings a unique combination of inventors, industrialisers,
and adopters of health care innovation, and look forward to talking with each other and in front
of you for the next 30 to 40 minutes about some of the barriers that there are to health care
innovation, some of the barriers there are to the adoption of that innovation, and some of
the things that we might and will do over the next years to drive health care into a new model,
tomorrow's model, to meet today's and tomorrow's conditions. So welcome, all of you. Thank you
very much indeed for joining us today, and I will start off with a question, and as you answer that
first question, if you could briefly just describe what your organisation does that will help those
listening today to understand the perspective that you come from, the skills that you've got,
and the ideas that you and your organisation has. So the question I'd like to start with,
the UK is creating the next generation of precision medicines, therapies, diagnostics,
and health technologies to fight and ultimately prevent disease, and I'd like to know from you
where you're seeing strong examples of UK leadership in that sector, and I'll start
with Anna, if I may. Anna, you are very welcome. Thank you very much, Chris. So in my first role
you mentioned of the religious professor of medicine, I contributed to Scotland and Glasgow,
University of Glasgow, winning a very large precision medicine grant from UKRI, which was
39 million from UKRI, topped up by industry partners into above 80 million, which contributed to
building the living laboratory for precision medicine in Glasgow in the biggest hospital
in Scotland, Queen Elizabeth University Hospital, in govern the area of probably one of the biggest
areas of deprivation in United Kingdom. This is where industry comes together with NHS and academia
to work on precision medicine in various aspects, and I think over the last few years our definition
of precision medicine, partially because of this work and many other international ideas,
movements, discoveries, have moved broader than just the right drag for the right patient
at the right time, but into data, digital, AI, machine learning, and therefore this living
laboratory for precision medicine brings companies both UK and international to work closely with
clinicians to have this what's called short white coat distance, although we no longer wear white
coats in hospital, and I think it's been really helpful investment to bring job creation, to bring
what I call triple helix academia, NHS and industry together in Scotland. My second hat,
which is chief scientists for health, for Scottish government, means working with stakeholders
across Scotland, so that's not Glasgow, that's all of Scotland. I no longer say Glasgow, Glasgow,
Glasgow, I now say all of Scotland, and part of activities for precision medicine has been a 10
million initiative that commenced around 2021, so during COVID to fund four precision medicine
projects, three in Edinburgh, one in Dundee on type two diabetes, that's very, very interesting
Dundee project, and two projects in Edinburgh that look at multiple sclerosis that you know
is more common in Scotland than the rest of UK. There is this Northern gradient that looks at
something unusual that is precision medicine in acute A&E situation, very unique project,
and precision medicine in liver disease, and these four projects together are still in progress,
but we've seen really interesting results coming through, and we've asked these teams to publish
in our new precision medicine journal, the Prisms Precision Medicine published by Cambridge Press,
so you would be able hopefully to see more detail about these projects soon.
Thanks very much Anna, so this is a real frontline medicine being reviewed and reported on to not
just folks in the UK here, but worldwide too, so getting that evidence base from areas where
disease is prevalent to those out there who can help treat and manage it. Thank you. Jackie,
from the cell and gene therapy catapult, what do you see as some some great areas of of UK
advancement and success? Well I suppose advanced therapies or cell and gene therapies, the terms
are used interchangeably, offer the potential for a single one-off treatment and a potential cure
for patients long-term, so they offer significant savings, not only the beneficial for the patients,
but they actually also offer significant savings for the NHS potentially, both in terms of cost,
but I'd say more importantly, freeing up resources within the NHS. I think we've got a number of
examples of UK leadership in this space, the least only last week there was a press release,
there's been just under £80m investment in the advanced therapy treatment centre network,
which has been in operation for the last six years. This is a network of centres across the
whole of the UK, coordinated by cell and gene therapy catapult. When we work with industry,
the triple helix that Anna talked about, we work with academia, industry, NHS to ensure that the
NHS is ready for the adoption of these therapies, because albeit they are one-off therapies
potentially, they're quite difficult to implement. You may need to take cells from a patient,
you need to coordinate that with the manufacturing slot that may well be on the other side of the
world, you then have to coordinate a patient's immunosuppression before they receive their own
cells back, so it is quite complex for the NHS to deal with. And if there wasn't that close
collaboration between industry and the NHS, much closer than what you would normally see,
where normally the manufacturer produces its little white pill, they hand it over to the NHS,
the pharmacist dispenses it, and that's the interaction, has to be much closer.
So the advanced therapy treatment centre has been working for the last six years to build
processes and systems, and we'll continue that over the next four years, but the funding is coming
from NIHR through our UK, so there'll be a much greater emphasis on clinical trials and how we
improve clinical trials here in the UK for advanced therapies. So that's one bit, but because this is
such a new field and there's so many touch points, I think also you'd want to consider
what the manufacturer of it here in the UK, and importantly, the release and approval of these
products here in the UK. There's a gene therapy for beta-phalosemia and sickle cell disease called
caskevi, it's a CRISPR-edited technology, so obviously the CRISPR editing allows you to
precisely edit genes, and there's a platform for the treatment of many, many
inherited genetic disorders, and in November last year, the UK was the first to globally approve
a CRISPR-edited product, which was actually manufactured here in the UK actually in Edinburgh,
just behind Rome, and sat. So not only did we work with Vertex, the producers, Rosalind CT,
with the manufacturers of it, to manufacture the product, but the MHRA were actually ahead of the
field and approved this. So I think that really shows the close interaction of the ecosystem here
in the UK, and I think we have that real advantage. We're quite a small country, but we're actually
very knowledgeable in this field, and I think if we can use that capability and connectivity,
the UK can stay ahead and show the leadership that we're already showing.
Thanks Jackie. Adam, from what you're seeing across medical or health technologies as well as
other areas of process improvement, what's your perspective on where the UK is playing well in
and across the health sector and innovation? Thank you Chris. At CPI, we tend to focus mostly on
developing, proving, and scaling up of novel manufacturing technologies for both health tech
and medicines, and we make them at the appropriate quality and quantity to feed into clinical
validation stages of GMP, for example, for medicines. And next generation medicines utilizing new
modalities are showing tremendous potential, we believe, to treat, to prevent and cure disease.
Take nucleic acid therapies, for example, both mRNA as well as oligonucleotides, from vaccines to
novel oncology therapies to treating other rare diseases, including autoimmune or neurological.
These new modalities are here to stay, and they are growing very rapidly. Early clinical trials
are promising some products coming into the marketplace. So CPI, we've worked very closely
with the UK Vaccines Task Force during the pandemic to look at how UK could build capability in mRNA
based vaccines, and this led to the establishment of our RNA center of excellence in Darlington,
which is now a GMP certified facility. And through this RNA center of excellence, we support companies
looking at scaling up of their RNA technologies towards clinical trials. And I think we're uniquely
positioned in this space because we can produce both the RNA as well as the lipid nanoparticles
that carry them. And in close collaboration with yourselves, Chris, through the MDC Medicine Discovery
Catapult Imperial College, University of Strathclyde and University of Liverpool, we are also leading
the intracelular drug delivery capability center of excellence for the UK, which will drive innovation
development in nanotherapeutic drug delivery systems, which will also revolutionize how some
of these next generation modalities are delivered to difficult to reach parts of the human body.
So these are all world-class, in my opinion, and in some pockets, world-leading. So they
naturally position UK as a leading country in driving forward some of these innovations.
And more recently, we announced the setting up of our oligonucleotide manufacturing innovation
center of excellence, co-located with our medicines manufacturing innovation center in Glasgow.
On HealthTech, for example, we're convening companies to look at oncology diagnostics as a
priority. How do we drive the next generation of oncology diagnostics and early diagnosis of
cancer, for example, which would have a very significant benefit to both the patient and the
care providers. Colleagues, what I'm hearing from you and we experience also the Medicine
Discovery Catapult is a future environment where medicines and health technologies are becoming
more complex. They are becoming more digitally enabled. They are becoming more strategic and
more specific as time goes on. And this is changing the relationship, in some cases, as Jackie very
rightly said, between industry and the health system, not just as a provider of a product or
service at a distance, but a much more closely engaged member of the health care community,
working very much more closely with health care providers. And that paints, obviously, a more
inventive and one hopes more productive health care system for all of us. What I'd like to look at
is the sort of counterargument to that at the moment and say, you know, where are the barriers?
Because this all sounds as though it's, you know, yes, highly impressive, highly inventive, highly
innovative. But we see from health systems around the world where health costs are increasing,
where, you know, in some cases, life expectancy, despite very high health care costs, is decreasing.
I'd just like to go through some of the barriers that you and your industrial community, for those
catapult colleagues, and also those in the health care system for Anna, with whom I will start.
What are you seeing as the barriers sometimes to the adoption of these innovations or the ability,
I'm sure there's no lack of willingness, but the ability to take these things on and make the
future different. Anna. I think this is a really important question. So we looked at the journey
of innovation from discovery science through various stages of translation to adoption.
And there is no dubiety at all in my mind and many of my colleagues that the adoption is the most
difficult step. You got it absolutely right. This is where lots of innovations that would be
wonderful in our health service or other health services just doesn't happen. And there are many
barriers financially already mentioned. Sometimes it's just so expensive that health service is
not able to adopt it at that time until it becomes cheaper. But there is also a risk appetite.
And a risk appetite is an interesting aspect. To take a risk doesn't cost money, but requires
right people in right places, I think, throughout our systems. So I am hugely interested in adoption
to the NHS, although I understand that companies, SMEs, other companies need adoption to any health
system. I think, as you rightly said, health systems around the world all have to change,
because we can't carry on as we're doing now. And one of the huge things we have to do is to move
to the left-hand side, i.e., to prevention. And precision medicine offers a fantastic way to
move to prevention through early diagnostics for cancer and everything else. So much earlier
interventions that are cheaper and better, vaccines that Aaron already mentioned, which is a huge
preventative measure for our populations. And only that brave, high-risk appetite
will move us to the left, will move us from spending all the money in last year of life,
rather than on preventative activities. I think it is also the regulation that is another barrier.
Sometimes, particularly in health, we want to prevent things that could be dangerous for patients.
So in a very good reasoning, our regulation starts inhibiting progress, inhibiting translation
and adoption. And I think one recent example we have spotted is in AI and machine learning,
where every time there is improvement in the model, it has to be re-submitted for agreement
that it hasn't changed significantly. So that gives an example that regulation developed in
good intentions could stop progress of research and innovation for our NHS and other health systems.
So I think we need to work together across the world internationally. This isn't, I think, for
Scotland, even whole UK. This needs to be international will and wish to fight with these
barriers, to reduce the barriers. Of course, safety is first for patients in health always,
but are we overdoing that safety through our risk appetite being too low? And my last
maybe mention is that you said rightly, you need to partner with industry. We need to learn
at all levels. For me, it would be Scottish Government, health in Scottish Government.
I would like us to partner with industry. I would like partnerships directly with NHS
and universities. I would like almost pan-Scottish partnerships with industries where it's
appropriate. And I think the appetite for this is now developing. And this is the only way we
need to learn that talking to industry is absolutely essential, that you can't collaborate
without this proper partnership type of discussion and that this is not conflict of interest at all.
This is helping patients together. Jackie, what do you see as some of the barriers to the adoption
of these very advanced medicines that you're helping many companies create now that can address
lifelong diseases in a very small number of doses? If I can hold that question,
I'm going to come back to what Ana was saying. And I think I absolutely agree with Ana. Within
the ATTCs, we had a 70 strong industry advisory group from SMEs all the way up to all the large
pharma. The lack of competition in that group was tremendous. It really was a collaborative spirit
to work together to overcome these barriers. You had companies releasing the same type of
products, same parties working together to overcome barriers, working together to look
at how we could streamline contracting, clinical trials, whatever. So I think Ana's right. I think
especially in a new field such as this, make best potential of it. People are willing to work together
and it will save everyone time, effort. It will drive standardisation. So I want to really reinforce
that. I totally support that. In terms of the barriers, same as probably multifaceted,
these are new therapeutics. They're quite complex. So we need to have a decent pipeline. Ana talked
earlier about the grants that she's given. There needs to be that real investment in the
scientific pipeline. Assuming that that's successful when we build that pipe, the next
piece of the barrier I would say is manufacturing. Do we have sufficiently skilled staff? Do we have
sufficiently robust manufacturing practices? So that's where I think things like the Catapult
Network come to the fore. We should be helping drive skilled workforce. We should be helping
drive innovation in manufacturing and by driving that innovation, hopefully you'll really drive
down the cost of goods. Advanced therapies, they have a high upfront cost. However, if they're used
properly, you remove all the comorbidities. You remove all this lifelong need for ongoing medication,
ongoing healthcare provision. But that high cost upfund with the way that the NHS is
currently funded is really quite complex. So drive down the cost of goods. I think that's
a really big barrier that we need to overcome. And then I suppose driving uptake, what we've seen
within the healthcare setting, these are new. So there's a resistance, this lack of training,
lack of time for people to understand what they are once you get outside the tertiary
centre. So we need to upscale the NHS workforce. But also we need to engage the patients with
new technologies such as this. We need to hear the patient voice much more strongly.
And by engaging that community, the uptake is going to be driven. We see again and again in the
ATTCs, the referral pathways are influenced by socioeconomic factors, by ethnicity,
language barriers, there's a whole number of barriers. So I think using technologies,
using the ability we have to reach the patients and understanding and communicating with them
really thoroughly will also increase the uptake. So I think multifaceted barriers that need to be
tackled individually, but holistically, you can't drive down the cost of goods but not have
an avenue to accelerate the uptake by patients. So I think multifaceted, Chris.
So no shortage of complexity in the medicines, no shortage of complexity in the barriers.
Arun, from the perspective of CPI, looking across diagnostics and medicines and health
technologies, are those barriers similar or subtly different for those other technologies?
I had picked two barriers, Chris, and both of them have been somewhat covered. One is clearly the
barrier around manufacturing scale-up, and that is very true across the next generation medicines,
as well as next generation health technologies. Many great inventions and technologies are shown
usually to be working at a lab scale, but they fail if they're not systematically scaled up for
manufacturing quality and volume. And this challenge applies to novel therapeutics, diagnostics,
medical devices, and this is where I totally agree with Jackie. You know, catapults have a
major role to play in this space in addressing this innovation value by providing access to both
expertise and resources and facilities to scale up products. In HealthTech, for example, we bring
together a multidisciplinary set of capabilities to allow the scaling up of diagnostics and medical
devices and under appropriate ISO standards so we can make the devices and their quality and
quantity to feed into clinical validation stages. The second challenge I wanted to highlight was
access to finance, and Ana very clearly talked about some of the later stage financial challenges
relating to adoption. I also believe there is a huge access to finance challenge during the
innovation stages in its own right. As we know, some of these novel therapeutics and HealthTech
products require anywhere from 8 to 15 years to commercialize after you've shown that something
works at a lab scale. So these are long gestation periods. Does the UK have the right scale of
private investment, for example, to go with some of the collaborative R&D grants to allow these
long gestation periods? So these are real challenges many of our SME clients particularly face. A
number of academic spin-offs and young small companies, they have a huge challenge around
access to finance, and if they don't secure the right financing, they will struggle to take it forward.
So looking across this broad spectrum of new healthcare innovations, there are no shortage
of challenges from getting those inventions through to the patients who will benefit from them.
And we've heard just now about digital change, about regulatory change, about reimbursement
change, around access to finance, access to skills, access to manufacturing, and so on and so forth.
These are not insurmountable, but they are addressable if we innovate across a range of
different areas. And I'm interested to hear the panel's views on those sort of key bits of, I
suppose, non-technological innovation maybe, that will increase the availability and accessibility
of these new treatments to patients who really need them, not only here, but also in other
areas of the world where the UK could be a test bed. Are there any non-technological innovations
in parts of our healthcare system, finance system, policy systems or whatever that
enable us to help move the needle in favour of the adoption of this technology and reduce those
barriers? I'm just keen to hear your ideas. Anna? Well, this is a difficult question for
just a clinician like myself, but I'll try. I think we need to think about diagnostics
as a road to prevention. So early diagnosis, it needs a bit of technology, but not necessarily
very sophisticated technology. So we have seen, to give a few examples, liquid biopsies in England,
not implemented across entire UK should we have done it. Do we know whether that sort of very
early diagnosis helps? Really have we done enough long-term observational analysis and studies?
We probably haven't. There are other things that can happen. And this brings me to the Scottish end-to-end
pathway that we've designed that Jacqueline is aware of, which we call ANIA and IDA. I explain
this abbreviations. So ANIA stands for Accelerated National Innovation Adoption and IDA stands for
Innovation Design Authority. We, with little money, we don't have much, brought together,
team with expertise in innovation and adopting innovation to our NHS. This is focused on NHS
not whole world, Chris, because NHS needs it, as you know. And then we brought senior people
from government and NHS to work hand in hand, including industry representative one, to increase
risk appetite, to reduce barriers, and to adopt once we decide that something is truly transformative
innovation to adopt it at scale across all our health boards, entire Scottish NHS.
And you would think that millions of such pathways do exist already around the world,
but we've been told by people who know, that is Big Pharma colleagues, that such pathways do not
exist, that this is pretty unique. So I'm hugely supportive to push that further to make it work
for patients and communities. And some of these innovations will be coming back to
prevention. Prevention will be a hugely important part of innovation. So for example,
type 2 diabetes can now be prevented, and we can achieve remission that could save the NHS
billions over time. Should we prioritise these sort of activities over other things?
It's a big question for population. But that's of course not everything. Looking at
mRNA vaccines that Arun mentioned, the whole area of mRNA vaccines for cancer,
these very specific, this absolutely almost individual focused interventions are breathtaking,
and we would like our population across UK and the world to have access to it. And the question
here is how could you make it accessible to a larger number of patients once your diagnostics
give you that early diagnosis, and when you can give this very highly specialized and focused
treatment? Thank you, Anna. Jackie. So thinking about non-technology, which is quite difficult in
this field, we tend to switch to the technology. I think some really simple approaches, clinical
trials. If we increase the number of clinical trials we're running with these innovative medicines,
not only does that give patients early access to these medicines, which is crucial, but also
allows the NHS to become familiar with them, to get ready for the adoption of their licensed
products when they become available. And that makes the UK attractive for product launch.
You know, we're a sovereign regulator now. It used to be that as part of the EU, there would be a
European-wide manufacturing and authorization, so the UK would by default be part of that
authorization. Now, we're subtly different, so we're able to attract companies in a different way.
You know, so let's get them enthused by coming here for the clinical trials and then work with
them in things like the MHRA's iLAPS scheme, innovative licensing and access pathway, where
you're looking at licensing, but also access and what's required for both so that the NHS is ready
for that and ready to commission them. So I think that's really important. It's not
technologically based. And also, in terms of clinical trials, we're already in advanced therapies.
We've got representation about 9% of all global trials. That's astonishingly high. It's usually
about 2% or 3%. Let's build on that. You know, if we're seen, as I said, the excellence for these
trials, bring them in. Training and education, again, not awfully technology-based. You can use
technology to do it. However, if you've got a skilled workforce and you've got clinicians, nurses,
healthcare practitioners who are confident in using these drugs, then you're going to increase
the patient access to them. And you're going to give the patients confidence to use the products,
because they understand the technology and that they've been informed properly.
And it was just when Anna was talking there, I started thinking slightly differently as well.
I think the risk appetite, if we could just broaden that a wee bit,
the risk currently always falls to the health service. These are expensive medicines,
a combined diagnostic extensive. When do you bring them in? Do you bring them in really early on?
However, if you think about you treat somebody with sickle cell disease and you remove all those
comorbidities, they have a one-off treatment and they're out in society in a high-value
manufacturing job potentially. And the economic benefit that they bring far outweighs the cost
that it might have been for the NHS if it's treated appropriately. So I suppose really
understanding the economic benefit of using these precise technologies early on and that risk sharing
is not just the health services should be picking up, we should be looking broader.
So those are some of the technology, non-technology solutions that came to mind from me.
Thanks Jackie, that's great. Arun to you.
I'll only make a couple of quick points. One is I still feel there's a huge level of fragmentation
across the health innovation ecosystem and how might we address that in a holistic manner.
More joining up and collaboration is a good starting point. I think there are some things
that we can deliver some quick wins, I think. And it's not always about new technology and I made
this point as well. Sometimes we can put together existing technologies in a much more pragmatic
manner and demonstrate quicker results. And to a large extent, our role as catapults is to support
developers of new therapies and diagnostics and other health technologies to accelerate their own
development pathway. And that should then feed into clinical validation stages. And subsequently,
I believe market forces and other national health priorities and policies will take over essentially.
So I'll pause there, but essentially there's a big piece around convening and bringing people
together and collaborating, not always reinventing. I think there's an art form in doing much more
of that to see some quick wins. Can you talk to us a little bit about the importance of clinical
trials and why that really matters to the UK? Yeah, I think clinical trials matter for a number
of reasons for the fanta therapies. Quite often they're used to treat rare diseases. And obviously,
the chance of many patients being within the UK or globally with that particular disease,
there's very few patients. So therefore, when you have your clinical trial,
you have to design it not only so that it's fit for purpose for regulatory purposes,
but you also have to have an eye on what's required for reimbursement and what you need for your HTA.
So I think that's really quite important. You do your trial once and you do it well. But as we move
to higher prevalent diseases such as diabetes or cardiac issues, then you really have to consider
your clinical trial. How do you do a comparison against standard of care? How do you use your data
within the NHS to prove that actually there is a lifelong benefit to the patient? So I think
really understanding the product and how it performs well in the clinic is important.
And also, as I said earlier, providing that real knowledge of how the product should be used in
the clinic only arises from using a clinical trial. That's where you learn about it. So I think
here in the UK, we really need to be encouraging the use of clinical trials to bring these
innovative products into the UK. And I know that myself and Anna have been having a discussion
about the real requirement for it here in Scotland, for instance. Anna, I don't know whether you'd
like to comment. Yes, so I agree 100% with Jacqueline that it is really essential to bring our clinicians
on board and how to do it and how to do it safely at the stage of clinical trials. As you probably
know, there is a big UK wide initiative to bring more commercial clinical trials to the UK. This
is something we participate in wholeheartedly across the UK. Clearly, we mostly talk about large
phase two clinical trials for common diseases. But Jacqueline is right that the same principle
applies and should apply to rare diseases. And this is the only way we'll do it well. We do it
safely and will bring great companies to the UK to get both funding and know how to our clinical
systems. So absolutely agree. We will be talking extensively about commercial clinical trials
over the last few months across the UK and in Scotland and everywhere else. And we want to do
it better, faster, but patient centric is the most important element of this.
Thank you, Anna. And yes, the implementation of the Assurgency Review will be a really important
aspect of clinical development across the UK for the next years to come. Arun, any thoughts on
the importance of clinical development here in the UK?
Yeah, I think it's vital. And there are some excellent clinical trial capabilities in the UK,
which I think is also an opportunity for attracting foreign companies to come and locate in the UK
and run their trials here. So I also see it as an economic opportunity, in fact, not just societal
and patient benefit. So we should be promoting more of the UK capabilities in the space.
We come to our final question and short answers from you all given the time that we have today.
What's the top innovation? What's the top of the tree for you as individuals in terms of the
innovation that's going to make the widest impact over the next few years? What's the one thing,
almost your magic wand moment that they say, if you can do this well, then you're going to make
the biggest impact, Anna? Yeah, I will be a bad person and say that what we've been seeing recently,
it's the AI with machine learning for imaging, for early diagnostics of lung cancer,
skin cancers, mammograms. We've seen hugely promising stuff that is not replacing doctors,
but helping doctors to do things faster in more efficient way and to get patients to treatment
much faster and safer. So sorry, I think that if we get that one right,
the whole way health services work will be improved enormously. Thank you, Anna, Jackie.
I was most linked with that. I was going to say data, using our data, whether that be within our
manufacturing, so that we understand our processes using technology. We really understand what's
going on in those living cells and the process going on there, so that we can really drive a
consistent, efficacious product that is produced more cheaply. And then using the data within the
health service, we've got this wealth of data. How can we tap into that to prove that actually,
the products do have lifelong persistence? And if it is a precise medicine for a particular patient,
proof indeed that that precision did work, and using that data to perhaps come back
to the topic about regulatory, can you approve platforms of products by using the wealth of
data that we have out there? So I think data. Thank you. Arun. I believe in perhaps the bit
more cliche prevention is better than cure and care. So for me, more support for populations to
be educated on healthy lifestyle choices will probably go a much, much longer way in delivering
a wider impact on human health as well as planetary health. Having said that, I do believe
early diagnostic technologies could be a big game changer. And again, Anna referred to this,
particularly technologies like liquid biopsy, how might we really enable the full potential
of such powerful approaches to very early diagnostic technologies?
Thank you. And thank you all for joining me to discuss some of the future of healthcare driven
by innovation and the adoption of that innovation, which will be impactful and make a difference.
We've heard about precision medicine. We've heard that that is leading to preventative medicine,
evidence based scale that pandemic paced, deployed early by workforces with new skills,
including many of those being digital skills, and a purposeful collaboration
in a three way mode between the health systems, industry and academia to drive adoption at scale,
and then report back to the system with pace. You've heard also from Catapult colleagues about
their working at multiple levels, supporting inventors, supporting SMEs, supporting larger
companies, supporting healthcare systems, supporting investors in this really important
community, helping all of them help health systems and industrialists help us as today's patients
and future patients. Thank you all very much indeed for your attention today to Dame Anna,
to Jackie and to Arun and to all of you for listening.
Thank you, Chris. I've really enjoyed this healthy debate, which identified so many pathways for
successfully evolving UK healthcare through innovation to make a real impact. We must shorten
development time from lab to patient drive down the cost of health innovations and move the dial
from treatment towards prevention through data and diagnostics. We also heard about the importance
of clinical trials, targeted application of data and AI and the need for better education
on healthy lifestyle choices, evolving UK healthcare through science, innovation and
technology has the power to improve and extend our lives. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the
Catapult Network Supercharging Innovation podcast. Episodes are available wherever you get your
podcasts. If after listening to this episode you have questions and suggestions or simply
want to sell us your ports, do get in touch with us via social media, through our website
catapult.org.uk or via your podcast app. Help us put UK innovation under the spotlight.
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Podcast Summary
Key Points:
The podcast series discusses breaking barriers in UK healthcare through innovation.
The expert panel in the fourth episode explores evolving UK healthcare.
Examples of UK leadership in precision medicine, therapies, and health technologies are highlighted.
Summary:
The podcast series focuses on overcoming barriers in UK healthcare through innovation and technology. The episode delves into evolving UK healthcare with a panel of experts discussing topics like building health resilience post-pandemic and enhancing accessibility to new treatments. Examples of UK leadership in precision medicine and advanced therapies are showcased, illustrating collaborations between industry, academia, and the NHS.
The discussion underscores the importance of collaboration, skilled workforce, and innovation in manufacturing to drive down costs and improve adoption of complex therapeutics. The conversation also touches on the need for international cooperation, risk appetite, and regulatory considerations to advance healthcare innovation. Overall, the dialogue emphasizes the shift towards preventative approaches, early diagnostics, and strategic partnerships as key drivers of progress in the healthcare sector.
FAQs
The UK has shown strong examples of leadership in precision medicine, with initiatives like the precision medicine grant in Glasgow and the approval of CRISPR-edited products.
Advanced therapies offer potential long-term cures and significant savings for the NHS, requiring close collaboration between industry, academia, and the NHS for successful implementation.
The UK is excelling in developing novel manufacturing technologies for health tech and medicines, particularly in nucleic acid therapies like mRNA and oligonucleotides.
Barriers to adoption include financial constraints, risk appetite, regulation challenges, and the need for closer partnerships between industry, healthcare providers, and regulatory bodies.
To overcome barriers, there needs to be increased investment in scientific pipelines, skilled workforce development, innovation in manufacturing, and collaborative efforts among industry, academia, and healthcare providers.
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